The ’85 Finals also furnished the first solid evidence that James Worthy, newly begoggled, was indeed worthy; he would become known as Big Game James in that series. It was a Finals of metaphors, beginning with a massacre and ending with an exorcism, both performed on that long-gone Boston Garden parquet. And as much as a retrospective of the ’85 championship series reveals two players and two franchises in stark relief, at the height of their aggregate power, it also provides unequivocal proof of the singular greatness of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the MVP of that series at age 38, who has somehow become both immortal and underrated.
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The Lakers won Game 3 in a rout in L.A., 137–104, after which Bird commented, as only Bird could, that some members of his team “played like sissies.” True or not, the suspicion fell on McHale. So in Game 4, as Lakers forward Kurt Rambis went in for a layup. . . .
“I saw two guys closing on me, and I knew one of them was going to hit me,” says Rambis, now the associate head coach of the Knicks. “No surprise it was Kevin.” McHale, making no attempt to block the shot, cuffed Rambis on the head and sent him flying. The Lakers forward crashed to the floor. McHale’s move was so out-of-bounds illegal that Bird, generally no peacemaker, went over to Rambis and gently lifted him up. In today’s less wild ’n’ woolly world McHale would’ve drawn a Flagrant 2, an ejection and perhaps even a multigame suspension.
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But the defeat also strengthened the Lakers’ resolve. Riley instituted a “no friends” policy regarding opposing teams. “We used to work out in the summer with DJ,” said Magic, referring to Boston guard Dennis Johnson. “Coop [Lakers sixth man Michael Cooper] and I were good friends with him. But after that loss Riles said no more friendly games, no more picking each other up and driving around, not even casual conversation. It was all business.”
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There was little to differentiate the Celtics (63–19) from the Lakers (62–20) during the 1984–85 regular season, but Boston was the favorite going into the playoffs simply because of the home court advantage afforded by the Garden. However, as the Finals began on Memorial Day, Bird was not on top of his game. Between Games 2 and 3 of the Eastern Conference finals against the 76ers, he had allegedly hurt his right index finger in a barroom fight in Beantown. Bird never talked publicly about the injury, won’t now and never indicated that it had anything to do with his subpar performance.
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The following day Riley walked into the film session at the team hotel, and the first thing he saw was Abdul-Jabbar sitting in the front row (he usually sat near the back), arms folded, staring stoically at the TV, ready to take his medicine. “His body language said, Let me see all my mistakes. Let me see that horror show,” remembers Riley. “That’s how Kareem was.” (Abdul-Jabbar, recovering from quadruple bypass surgery, was not available to be interviewed for this story.)
Like most teams, the Lakers broke their game film into small, digestible parts with themes—you didn’t properly rotate here, you didn’t double-team there, etc.—and on this day those themes sounded like indictments. Riley ran the same snippets over and over; the dominant ones were of Kareem getting beat. “It was harsh,” said Mitch Kupchak, now the Lakers’ general manager and then a backup big man in the L.A. rotation, “and directed mostly at Kareem.”
As Magic remembers it, “Riles got around to everybody eventually, including me, but Kareem was the focal point for an obvious reason: Pat knew we had to get him going to have any chance to beat the Celtics.”
After the two-hour film session Riley gathered the team together and announced that whistles would not be blown during the ensuing scrimmage. “Riles huddled up with the reserves, gave them their instructions, and they just beat us to death,” says Magic. “His message was: Stop whining, stop looking at the referees, be physical yourself. There were almost a couple fights. It was like football. Then we did it the next day too. But you know what? I think it was the turning point of the series.”
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8AGckrRXic[/youtube]
http://www.si.com/longform/2015/1985/nba-finals/index.html?xid=si_social
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